AmateurRadio.com

April marks the beginning of the Club 72 QRP Marathon. This is not a contest, but is a QRP DX operating activity. In a nutshell, it’s basically a friendly competition to see how you can do against other QRPers on a sort of a “miles per Watt” basis.

I had two QRP DX QSOs tonight. One with EA8BVP on 20 Meters, which was a 2X QRP QSO, and one with HR9/WQ7R on 10 Meters, where I was the lone QRP station.

QSOs are permitted on any HF band, 160 through 10 Meters. You can enter your best DX QSO per band, per day for the entire month of April. All the calculations are figured out for you. All you need to enter is the QSO date and time, the calls (yours and the station you worked), the Maidenhead locators for both stations, and the output power of both stations.

So far, out of 16 stations competing, I am in 11th place. I think it’s pretty obvious that the leaders need not fear me. So far, I am the only stateside station competing.

This is more than anything, a personal challenge to get on the air and work as much QRP DX as possible. I have no idea how I will end up, but it will be a fun and interesting journey.

You do not have to be a Club 72 member to participate, but membership is free, so why not look into it. You can simply Google “Club 72 QRP” and you will get the hyperlink to the Website. Normally, I would provide the link for you, but I am typing this on my Android tablet, and providing a link is not as simple a task as it would be were I at my desktop computer.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

CT8/PA4N

I finally had a chance to fire up the K3 on Monday afternoon, it has been a very busy weekend besides I have been reading on most blogs how poor the conditions were....even for the digi folks. It was very windy and cold up this way on Monday with the surprise of snow in the morning. We have some 230KV lines at the back of the house and when they start to blowing around some (I guessing) loose insulator cause me some QRN. The blogs were spot on and the bands were not in real good shape at all besides the power line QRN was not helping either. Later in the afternoon the winds settled and the bands had some CW spikes showing on the P3 here and there.

230KV lines out back

I was on 20m and heard CT8/PA4N who was operating from Sao Miguel island (EU-003) on the Azores.  Frank was only going to be on the island until April 3rd so I wanted to give him a shot. The band was not busy at all, they were not running split and since conditions were not that great I pumped the K3 up to 5 watts. With only one repeat of my call I made the contact. As I was entering the logging info into DxLabs there was a pileup developing so it would seem I got in at the right time.  I also noticed that fellow blogger John N8ZYA has also made contact with the team as well.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].

A good day today. Not much operating as I had to install a new PC monitor here in the shack and then a new Freetime Freesat receiver down in the living room. It’s one of the new ones with WiFi support so I don’t need to run a network cable down to the living room which all existing boxes have required.

After that I came up to the shack to see if I had installed any new QRM generators. Switched to 10m PSK31 and heard a single solitary station – TO7BC  from Mayotte!

I’m not a DXer but this signal on its own in the clear was too much to resist. It took about 15 minutes to break the pileup. I couldn’t hear any other callers so I used XIT to dial in 0.5kHz up and hoped for the best. After a while with no success I decided to go up another 100Hz and he came right back! I must have been the only station who received a 579 report.

I shall check the website later to see if I got in the log. I will also have to find out where Mayotte Island is! I don’t often get to work DXpedition stations so I’m quite pleased with this afternoon’s work. I’ll check for QRM generators another time.

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

As written here before, as a backpacker and ham operator, the Summits on the Air program had become a passion of mine. And, as written here before, I have a passion for traveling light. Every extra ounce in a backpack is important and seems to be multiplied by some unknown factor derived from  the vertical gain of your trek. Backpacking for backpacking's sake is bad enough, but throw radios into the pack and the challenge is amplified. One of my standard practices is to take a small backpack and make decisions on what not to take as opposed to taking a big pack with room for more gear, because you will fill it up.

So with this thought in mind I saw where LNR has come out with a more "trail friendly" 40/20/10 EFHW antenna, lighter than their current version, total weight, 3.5 oz. So I bought one. As I pondered my efforts to save weight in my pack, I had a thought and it went something like this, "Mike, the thing that you carry on the trail that weighs the most isn't your antenna or even your pack, it's you".  I am obsessing on ozs. in my pack and I am more than a few pounds over weight. On average your pack, plus or minus, should be around 16% of our body weight, so by far the largest impact I can have on my total weight is to drop a few pounds myself. Now I will admit, losing weight is not as much fun as buying lighter and more efficient gear, but it will probably have a much more significant impact on the weight I take up the hill..

One thing you will never confuse a hamfest with is a Triathlete convention. We have a hobby that is usually performed sitting down. So having a niche in the hobby that requires us to exercise a little is a good thing. I ran five marathons in the '80's, including the New York Marathon in 1982, so I know what it feels like to be in shape. I don't feel that way now, so I am making a commitment to drop a few pounds.

However, I will still obsess about lighter gear.
Mike Crownover, AD5A, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Texas, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

It was inevitable this would happen: someone has started a Yahoo! group for the JT9 mode. Pity they couldn’t have made it a Google group like the one for JT65A but I guess more hams have Yahoo! accounts than Google accounts.

There was already a fairly quiet WSJT group but this will keep the discussions about using JT9 on HF separate from the rather esoteric MS and EME stuff.

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].

This appeared on their Facebook page today:

This is the EFT-10/20/40, which is a “Trail Friendly” version of their popular EF-10/20/40MKII antenna.  The one shown above comes in at a weight of 3.5 ounces.  The EF-10/20/40MKII, which I have, is already no burden to carry. But if you’re one of those guys who are into serious hiking (can you say Appalachian Trail?), where every quarter of an ounce makes a huge difference, then you may want to look into this baby.

I love my EF-10/20/40MKII.  I tuned it so that I don’t need to use the KX3’s autotuner. It didn’t take long and only needed a minor adjustment – it was THAT close right out of the package.  Using one of these is simplicity in itself – get one end up in a tree, hook the other end to the radio and go to town! And you make contacts – plenty of them.

The LNR Webpage can be found by clicking here.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP – When you care to send the very least!

Larry Makoski, W2LJ, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Jersey, USA. Contact him at [email protected].

I only managed 4 QSOs in abour as many hours using JT9-1 this morning. I worked LU8EX whom I recognized having made a JT65A contact with him in the past. Hopefully more operators will make the switch from JT65A to JT9-1. At the moment it feels like I’ve worked everybody. I was spotted many times by VK3AMA even when I was running 5 watts. Pity there is no-one else in Oz using the mode yet.

I switched to PSK31 in the afternoon and my QSO rate immediately improved. A nice catch was Luc PR8EP whose QSL card I picture here.

Another good one was Eric HS0ZJK in Phetchaburi, Thailand. He is only the second Thai station I have worked, and both were on 15m.

Julian Moss, G4ILO, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from Cumbria, England. Contact him at [email protected].